


empty spaces

by hotaryu, Hugabug



Category: Heneral Luna (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mafia AU, warning: it's the mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7484043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotaryu/pseuds/hotaryu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hugabug/pseuds/Hugabug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are places, Vince thinks, where there’s nothing left, in him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	empty spaces

There are places, Vince thinks, where there’s nothing left, in him. A place where happy memories of childhood used to be, burned on fire by the same flames that ravaged his happy home and took him to the underworld. It was a hard life - to scavenge, to go around screaming till his voice was lost and cracked, his feet aching and skin bruised, his forehead beaded with sweat, that fateful day years ago. You’re on your own, the world told him - that in life, the monsters won. That life was a fight. That to fight you had to win.

And of course, he did. Swallowed his idealism. Swallowed his pride. Learned to fight, learned to carry the revolver. Learned to stick to Greg, wherever he went. From Vicente Enriquez Jr., he would become Saguitsit, a mafia soldier. Stuck to Greg wherever he flew by, the Aguila, he was simple.

Minimalistic, simple, numb. Three words he liked to describe himself. Know thyself, that had been a saying that Pole had told him, once, during his early days in the mafia. He liked chocolates, strawberry-flavoured ice cream, rain and preferred beer over whisky; he liked his revolver steady and trusty, he liked to hit the gym to get sweaty and fit. Hot showers, nice little photos, taking photos, when he had time. A regular young man of twenty and two, albeit he had a babyface, and that he worked in the underworld, putting up with Tinio and Greg’s excessive womanizing.

He hacked. To defeat the enemy, one must know the enemy. His fingers drummed up on his keyboard, as he recovered some files here and there. His room was barely accented, minimal. No photos hung, only a faded picture of his mother was framed and put in a corner of the room. The Art of War, The Prince. The Walking Dead. Just three books in his desk, as well as After Dark and Nowegian Wood.

An hour of peace and quiet. It was rare to get those, working. He continued to drum his fingers along the keyboard. Hmm, the files on the police officers were getting ready. Valeriana Sentido. Conscience. Eduardo Rusca. Manuel Bernal. Just a few names. More data appeared onscreen and he clicked the Ctrl. + S button many a time, to make sure the data was truly saved. Nothing better than to be prepared.

No trouble of Greg fucking some random chick he picked up at a mission or bar, on their walks, or the trouble of washing Greg’s table in his room, or Tinio getting home drunk tonight. Tonight, Greg would be sleeping soundly in his room, tired, from a day, of intelligence-gathering as per Miong’s orders in his ridiculous Hong Kong accent. Tinio would be with Concha, fighting over what anime to watch or some ridiculous sappy Kdrama she had picked up from their recent assignments. All of them, here in Manila. All of them, a family.

But the strange thing, Vince had always felt, was that he found it hard to feel something. An attachment outside Greg. Regarded Miong and his consort Pole with a respect, but no affection. A brotherly protectiveness and concern for Greg. Concern for Tinio and Concha. With Greg, he supposed, he could feel… whole. It was partial, everything.

His eyes flew back to the screen, as he clicked the x on the folder. Jumped from folder to folder, to other files.

A folder titled Associates. He clicked it open.

_Pedro Paterno. Felipe Buencamino._

Shit.

He saw her name. He didn’t know what possessed him to click her file. Well, either way he had to find out.

There it was. Her face, in a picture. 2x2. Those hazel eyes, chinita features. Small, straight nose, thin lips. She was pretty, he supposed, as he scrolled over the file.

Kuneho. He read the whole thing. A year younger, a survivor. A fighter. A hacker. Like him, too. He found his nose twitch - so that explained the new programs installed on his laptop recently, the disrupted phone connections he had fixed just yesterday. His phone password had been changed, from his birthday, to his mother’s. His laptop password had been undone, last week.

They called her Kuneho, the police did, but Vince had heard other names. Addie, for a girl with a rabbit pendant hanging from her neck, with a quick smile, a sharp tongue and thighs that could kill. A good fighter. The band aid on his shoulder, applied to him by her, when they were walking together a night ago.

She’d been… on his mind for a while. Came running to him for the last three weeks, as if she was courting him. Begging. Arguing. For his asshat of a brother who wanted him around for his wedding. He’d said no.

She had argued. Tackled him to the ground. Rubbed his arm. Sent him Ferrero Rocher. Kitkats. Hershey. All the chocolates she knew he liked. 

And the worst thing about her was she had an effect on him. The sudden lurch at his belly when she smiled at him and touched his nose. Or when she told him to be safe, before they parted. Or when he would look back at the conversations they had over Machiavelli or Miong or Greg or the color of the sky and he realized he actually liked it.

Or that sometimes, he thought of home, beside her.

His mother’s smile. Etong’s laughter. Times, when, he could just lie on the ground and admire the stars and they would all be safe and happy, when he could stop pushing people away from him.

He couldn’t understand her. Was it because she was a girl? Or was he jealous she could be able to laugh and smile, despite surviving a massacre and living on her own?

He couldn’t grasp it. Why he found himself stupefied when she put the bandaid on his shoulder and smiled at him when he asked and probed her for more answers. Why he suddenly remembered better memories, better things. Why he yearned for more things, beyond the routine of getting his revolving and dealing with bullshit.

He resented her? He sighed, to be reminded of the feeling of being flustered when she had thrown the Ferrero Rocher bouquet at his face. That was embarrassing. Bad for his image.

Push and pull. Maybe she was the push and he was the pull. Drawn to her like a magnet. Or was it even a stretch to compare her to the sun?

He hated this. Vulnerable. Finding himself catching things, making him feel things. Want things that were not supposed to be his.

Fuck everything. Screw what she made him feel. He scratched the back of his neck. Thinking about her at a time like this. This wasn’t right, to want her. It was illogical. It was stupid, and it was her fault she had to be too damn pretty, too damn sassy, too smart, too opinionated.

He sighed. Again and again. It was too annoying. Too much. The Ferrero bouquet. The chocolates. The pleading. The arguing. Her smiles. The conversations. Everything.

Stop it, Vince. If you wanted her, you would’ve made her yours. If you wanted her, you would’ve told her.

He clicked the x on the window, and shut down his laptop.

Maybe he would tell her tomorrow, when they would pass each other at the hallways, or when she would wait for him, after his hours. Hold her hand, suddenly, if they passed by Manila Bay, make her smile.

Maybe, he would say the words. Hey, I like you. Let’s go on a date. Maybe, she didn’t know. He’d seen how her shoulders slumped and how she bit her lip when he kept saying no to Etong. Maybe, one day, she would say yes. And then things would finally go the way he could dream them to be.

But every night, every day, he would see her, leave. Say bye to him with that smile that broke skies. Then go skip off into the darkness, hopping off somewhere, that ray of sunshine dampened by the rejection he had not directly stated to her, in the sounds of his dream Sundays.

“There’s no one,” she would tell him tomorrow, as she ate apples. “What about you?”

He’d shake his head.

No one at all.

But he didn’t say that there was a dream of someone. That there would _**always** _ be a dream of someone.

Empty places, empty spaces. Spaces for dreaming about her, when he could never stand a chance.

He lay on his bed and shut his eyes. Tomorrow would be a long day.


End file.
